BITSian produced H1Bees creates history
Srikanth Devarajan,
Kartik Venkataramanan, Devesh Satyavolu and Srivatsa Srinivasan, were
not unlike many others who have left India over the past decade on the
H-1B visa, a guest worker program for highly skilled professionals.
They wore glasses and mustaches and collared shirts. They could
exterminate Y2K bugs and code Java and link Unix. But as they toiled in
cubicles, they dreamed of keyboards of a different sort, of a world
where C-sharp is just a musical note, not computer code. And then their
worlds became one.
Their collaboration
resulted in the creation of their first music album, H1Bees. The album,
named after the US visa given to foreign workers with high-tech skills
and recorded in a suburban basement-turned-studio, was released on
September 10. Its music is "a mix of Indian and Western beats with
lyrics exploring the high-tech immigrant's experience in the United
States." The music is written by Srikanth Devarajan and performed by
aspiring Rock-and-Roll musicians who arrived in the United States to
work in the computer and software industry. "The album, which will be
sold via South Asian Web sites and stores for $6, boasts songs in
English, Hindi and Tamil."
Shankar Nagarajan
(BITS ’88) handles the marketing and PR work for the album.
Shankar is also a core member of the East Coast BITSAA group and has
been involved with the album since its conception and execution.
Srikanth, Srivatsa and he have a company which has produced this album.
The album is priced at $9.99 and is now available in leading online
stores including CDBaby and BestBuy. For more on the album, check out
their website at www.h1bees.com
Producer Vatsa AND lyricist Devesh Satyavolu are both BITSian Alums
After
BITSian Manishankar, who shot to fame with 16 December, it is now the
turn of Sivakumar, another BITSian, to grab the arclights. Sivakumar,
who earlier worked with Mani Ratnam as assistant director, is set to
direct his first movie Chukkallo Chandrudu. He has already managed to
hit the headlines by pulling off a casting coup by bringing
together today's A-list stars like Siddharth, Saloni, Charmi to share
screen space with veterans like ANR and Waheeda Rehman. In keeping
with the string of trendy flicks churned out these days, the movie is
supposed to be an energetic youth techno flick. The muhurat of this
film was held at State Art Gallery in Madapur on the morning of 24th
August. We wish the BITSian director the best as we eagerly wait to see
how this film shapes up and performs at the box office.
